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New lawmakers are stars, briefly

Swearing-in day in recent years has also become somewhat of a family field trip. |
John Shinkle
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No photographs are allowed in the Senate chamber, so Biden and the new class of senators must re-enact the swearing in down the hall in the historic Old Senate Chamber, where cameras are permitted.

Traditionally, new senators ask one of their home-state colleagues to accompany them during their oath of office. GOP Sen.-elect Ron Johnson will be escorted by his new Wisconsin colleague, Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl, as well as former Republican Sen. Bob Kasten. The only new Democrat to join the Senate this week, Connecticut Sen.-elect Richard Blumenthal, will be sworn into office alongside the man he is succeeding: retired Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd.

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The festivities surrounding each senator’s swearing in range from intimate to impressive — from a small brunch for friends and family to a mock ceremony for hundreds with a Supreme Court justice.

Kentucky Sen.-elect Rand Paul, a Republican and a darling of the national tea party movement, will have a joint reception with his father, Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, after his swearing-in ceremony on the Senate floor.

Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey’s entire family — including parents, siblings, nephews and in-laws — were scheduled to attend the festivities. His office reported that so many people accepted their invitation to come to Washington that they had to book another room for their scheduled celebratory luncheon.

In an unusual move emblematic of this freshman senator’s clout, Ohio Republican Rob Portman will re-create his swearing in at a ceremony with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for more than 400 guests. Portman, a former congressman and Office of Budget Management director, has a “friendly” relationship with Alito from his earlier years in D.C., according to an aide.

Though members get the chance to pose for photos with their families afterward, the real swearing in for the House takes place for the entire chamber at once and will be led on the House floor by incoming Speaker John Boehner just after he takes the gavel from Nancy Pelosi.

It will be interesting to see how the unqualified teabaggers (pizza makers, eye doctors, real estate moguls etc.) fare on a job where they are expected to be lawyers and law makers. The stupid teabaggers have such a low opinion of Congress that they think anybody can do it. Yes, anybody can just sit around and even vote on a bill, but crafting or modifying one takes knowledge and legistlative skill.

The Republicans, in particular, rely on corporations, lobbyists, their conservative think tanks--Hertiage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, etc., to actually craft bills which they in turn submit. That is what happened when the nation's disasterous energy policy was crafted behind closed doors, excluding environmental groups (oversight), and kept frrom the American public through multiple layers of courts by the corrupt, Bush-Cheney neo-con artists that continued mining deaths and safety violations; pollution abuses including the BP oil well blowout (hundreds of jobs lost); corruption of the Mineral Management Service (oversight); failure to collect oil drilling royalities, litigation protection; corportate subsidies and tax breaks; and dropping of EPA lawsuits and again, oversight.

What the self-serving, narrow-minded, teabaggers will fail to bring to Congress is integrity and an honest effort to clean up influence pedding, campaign finance abuses, "bridge to nowhere" earmarks, massive military industrial congressional complex/no-bid contracts, 435-plus war-profiteers, the exploded top secret industry (1,931 companies, 854,000 government jobs, 265,000 contract jobs costing 30 percent more), etc.. The Democrats have no parallel to the Bush I and II oil wars; GOP K St. Project/partisan lobbyist allegiance, Abramoff/Delay scandals; no parallel to Nixon and their corruption of government; or the imperial Bush-Cheney presidential nightmare; no McCartyisms; no Hoover Great Depression or Bush Great Recession debacles, no corporate-insider SCOTUS--Citizens United judges. Only in America do the poor and working class fight on behalf of the rich and against their own best interests.

how hard is it to represent people. your partisanship blinds you that your precious party has unions and socialist terrorist craft their bills and then they dont even care to see what they put in them before voting on them. they federal government has gotten to big and corrupt. thats both parties and you know it. these politicians need to be knock down a notch because the American people are tired of the games. you are either the narrow mind ignorant one or just intellectually dishonest.